Sleeping Patterns in Different Cultures

Every culture, religion and race has something new & different to offer to us. Why leave sleep behind?

Sleeping patterns differ immensely over the globe.

It is quite apparent that there are significant differences in-sleep in different parts of the world and at different times in history. Traditions, cultural values and local conditions and environments all have a bearing on-sleep practices and attitudes.

One major source of these differences is the widespread availability of artificial light, which has led to significant changes in the sleep patterns in the industrialized west since its introduction in the mid-19th Century. It seems likely that today we sleep at least an hour less each night than was the custom even a century ago, and probably several hours less than before industrialization and electricity. According to some studies, artificial lighting has encouraged both a later sleep onset time but also the tendency to sleep in a single concentrated burst throughout the night (monophasic sleep), rather than the more segmented and broken-up sleep patterns (polyphasic or biphasic sleep) still found in many undeveloped or nomadic societies.